Jason Katims, Honorary Canadian

What do you know about Canadians? Sarah from Cinesnark explained that, before this weekend, a lot of her perception of Canada was via South Park. I know she’s joking, but I know a lot of people whose thoughts of Canadians involve Pamela Anderson, hockey, and cold weather. (Also, for those of you who think our coloured money is funny now? We’re switching to plastic bills this fall.) I know it’s hard to know the intimacy of a place – any place – when you haven’t spent time there.

The other overarching trait, the one you’ve heard joked about but don’t believe, the one that’s actually kind of true - we are not a bragging people. It’s just not done. We don’t boast about our achievements, but if you found out about them, well, that’s okay then, we can quietly discuss them. And oftentimes, people say you have to be successful outside of Canada before people inside Canada acknowledge said success. It’s considered to be tacky to be boastful about what you do. We are a country comprised of your prim Aunt Rita over and over again.

So look.

In an interview with Deadline Hollywood Daily Jason Katims is cautious. He speaks about how it would be ‘nice’ if there was recognition for his shows, his furious, passionate, difficult work. But you know, it would just be ‘nice’.

He is very, very careful about saying, without saying it, that yes, Friday Night Lights damn well does deserve Emmy nominations – several, in fact – and that Connie Britton and Kyle Chandler are, while completely amazing, only visual representations of how hard everyone else works, and that Parenthood is trying hard to follow in the same footsteps but really since this is the last year for FNL which everyone knows is the superior show, that P’hood can step off for a year (but he’ll take the accolades for his team if he can get them).

I kind of wonder about this sort of move. Katims might get more attention for his woefully underwatched and underloved shows if he swung his dick around a little more. I know that’s a crass thing to say, but listen, here’s a man who’s making, by my argument, the most subtle, affecting TV on traditional network television. Why can’t he brag a little more? Why can’t he vocalize what he must think – that they’re important and necessary and that they should be seen?

He talks about the spirit and the fervor and the labour that were behind the 76 charmed episodes of FNL. Would it kill him – and his obvious quiet, internal pride – to say ‘yes, I think this kind of TV is rewarded’? Would you fault him for it? Would you not watch his shows because he was proud of them? I was joking of course, about Katims and the ‘ordinary Canadian’-ness. But we’d be honoured to have him and, I suppose, when you take the sensitive, tuned-in, able-to-write-women-properly, subtle wonderful brain, you take the lack of self promotion. Still, a girl can dream.

Attached – the amazing Connie Britton last night at the Critics’ Choice Television Awards. (Lainey: will the Emmys finally wake up about FNL?)